GUIDELINES FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS FRIENDLY SPACES

Though Women and Girls Friendly Spaces (WGFS) are now considered a central component to gender-based violence prevention and response programming in South Sudan, this has only been the case since the 2013 crisis. A number of organizations currently implement WGFS – often under the name of “women’s centres” or “women’s safe spaces” – but, to date, there has been no commonly agreed understanding of what a WGFS is, what the key aims and purpose are, or what activities should be. UNICEF initiated the development of these WGFS Guidelines to help capture and agree upon some minimum standards and shared expectations for WGFS in South Sudan.

Though similar projects have been undertaken in other emergency-affected countries, due to the unique nature of the South Sudan context, all actors involved felt it was important to have a set of guidelines specifically tailored to this particular response in order to meet the real needs of humanitarian actors operating on the ground and the communities they serve.

The current version of the document, completed in mid-2016, serves as a working document to be piloted later during the first half of 2017. The content will be continually revisited for the first year to identify any additions and/or modifications that may be needed.